Indexing: Reflections (Kindle Serials) (Indexing Series Book 2)

by Seanan McGuire

  “If you go to the mirrors, they may be willing to make a trade,” she said, finally.

  I frowned. “Define ‘trade.’ Becoming somebody’s enchanted looking glass isn’t my idea of making progress.”

  “You might,” said Tanya. “I won’t lie to you about that. Our story is . . . hungry. All stories are hungry. They eat all the history they can find, because it can be used to create variations on the theme. We didn’t have poisoned combs before a Snow White came to the wood with tales of mermaids in her heart. If you go to the mirrors and show them a story they don’t know yet, they might be willing to show you something in return.”

  This sounded too good to be true, which meant it almost certainly was. Warily, I asked, “Which stories do the mirrors know?”

  “That’s the problem,” said one of the other Snow Whites, our Midwestern dairy princess. She had died on a parade float, something she reminded us all bitterly of whenever she had the opportunity. “Nobody has a list. And if you don’t have anything they want . . .”

  “I know how it goes in fairy tales. Don’t make deals with the devil unless you’re sure you can pay them off.” I turned to look at Tanya. “Is there any other way for me to find a body that isn’t being used, that’s close enough to my team for me to help them?”

  Silent, she shook her head.

  My decision was made—if it had ever really been a decision. Maybe this was all part of my story. I took a breath, and asked, “Will you take me to the mirrors?”

  Again, she shook her head.

  “I will,” said Ayane. I turned. The Japanese Snow White was watching me with bright hope in her eyes. “I know the way.”

  I smiled, a small, bitter thing, like a poisoned apple in my mouth. “Then lead the way.”

  # # #

  If the walk from where I had awoken to the clearing had been long, the walk from the clearing to the place where the mirrors waited to seal my future was unbearable. We trudged through snow, Ayane and Judi in the lead, me bringing up the rear in my bloody shift, and the wind wailed around us, making promises I couldn’t understand. I would, though. If I stayed here long enough, I would, and then I would never find the way home.

  “Almost there,” called Ayane.

  “Oh, yay,” I muttered—and then, between one step and the next, the world changed. Gone was the snow and the forest and the whispering wind, replaced by a hall that stretched out toward forever, part of some great and unseen palace. I would have thought I’d stepped into a different story altogether, if not for two things: mirrors covered the walls so completely that the original wallpaper was all but obscured, and the air still tasted of apples.

  “How can there be so many?” I asked, and my voice echoed in the silent hall like I had shouted. Ayane flinched. Judi didn’t. And nothing, thankfully, stirred in the black and silent depths of the mirrors.

  “Every Snow White who isn’t in the wood somewhere is here,” said Ayane. She reached out to touch a frame, brushing her fingers across the carved black wood. “Some of them are the ones who went bad, but not all. I have friends in this hall. They said going into the mirrors was like going back to sleep, only this time there’s no true love’s kiss to wake you. Just darkness and dreams and peace. Except when people like us come along and mess it all up for them.”

  “So what do I do?”

  Turn and run, whispered the part of me that was always going to be a frightened fairy-tale princess, tied to the things other people said about my story. I pushed her aside with all the strength I could muster, and waited.

  “Put your hand on the glass and say what you want,” said Ayane. “That’s all.”

  “Okay . . .” The nearest mirror was almost as tall as I was, with a white ash-wood frame. I pressed my palm against the glass. It was as cold as ice. Closing my eyes, I said, “My name is Henrietta Marchen. I’m a Snow White. Another Snow White stole my body, and I need to warn my team. Please, will you help me find a way back to them?”

  The cold began to race up my arm. I tried to pull away, and found I couldn’t: my palm was fixed to the glass. I tried to open my eyes. I couldn’t do that either, and then the unpleasant sensation of someone rifling through my memories distracted me from the physical discomfort.

  We are mirror; we see what is reflected, whispered a voice, and while it was cold as glass, I could hear the ghost of the woman it had once been. Somehow, that was the worst part of all. Do you grant consent for all the stories you have touched?

  “Yes!”

  Good, said the voice, sounding so pleased with itself that I instantly knew I’d made a mistake. But there wasn’t time to take it back; I was falling, and somehow, even with my eyes closed, I knew the mirror was there, waiting to take me in and take me down, down into the cold darkness where all Snow Whites eventually went to die and dream forever. Down, down, down, and everything was black, and then even the darkness was gone.

  # # #

  I was standing in a farmyard that looked like something out of a BBC production of The Crucible. Chickens clucked and scratched at the dirt; a black and white cat prowled by, tail low, intent on some feline errand. I looked down at myself, relieved to see that I was properly dressed for the first time since I’d eaten the apple: black suit, white shirt, black shoes. Even my badge was there, clipped to my belt. The only problem was, I didn’t know where the hell I was.

  A woman—a girl, really, no more than sixteen—stepped out of the house, a basket over her arm and a kerchief tied over her neatly braided, wheat-colored hair. She was wearing a homespun brown dress, with an apron around her waist. Oddly, that wasn’t what kept me from recognizing her at first. It was her face. She was smiling, utterly serene. She looked like someone who had never been anything but at peace with herself, and with the world around her.

  Then she moved out of the sun and into the shadow cast by the elm at the edge of the yard. It added just a little darkness to her hair, and dimmed just a fraction of the sparkle from her eye. I gasped. I couldn’t stop myself.

  Sloane Winters was in front of me, and she didn’t even seem to know I was there.

  “But I don’t know this story,” I said, half protest and half plea. Sloane had shared enough about her past for me to know that she considered it something painful and private, something she didn’t want to discuss with anyone, least of all me. And yet here I was, about to watch it all unfold in front of me. This wasn’t right. This was a violation.

  “You are a mirror,” whispered the voice I’d heard from the glass. It sounded like it was coming from right next to me, but mine was the only shadow on the ground. “She passed before you and was reflected. You may not know her story, but your mirror’s heart does. If you want us to give you what you asked, you’ll keep your part of the bargain. You’ll give us her tale.”

  It was an invasion of privacy at best, and a human rights violation that could see me losing my badge and maybe getting myself killed at worst. If Sloane ever found out about this, I was a dead woman.

  And I had no other way of getting back to the people I cared about . . . Sloane included. I swallowed, hard, and forced myself to keep watching.

  Sloane crossed the yard with quick, light steps, her basket hanging easy from her arm as she approached the henhouse. The chickens clucked and strutted, but didn’t flee from her. One particularly large brown hen hopped onto her foot, making a soft clucking noise. Sloane laughed. I gasped again. It was a beautiful sound, as light as her footsteps, filled with an absolute certainty that when given the choice, the world would choose to be kind. I’d never heard her laugh like that. Whatever bright thing she had once contained, the world and her story had long since beaten it out of her.

  “What do you think you’ll have by doing that, hmm?” she asked, shaking the chicken off her foot. Her accent was like nothing I had ever heard before, caught somewhere between British and Southern. I still had no idea what year it was.

  “Amity!” called a woman’s voice, from the other side of the ya
rd. Sloane—Amity, she must have been Amity when this was really happening, before the silence and the story descended on her—straightened and turned, the smile still resting easy on her lips.

  “Yes, Mama?” she called.

  “There’s no need to fetch the eggs in,” said the woman in the farmhouse door. She was tall and plump, with features that were an older echo of Amity’s own. They were lined with worry, and there was an odd brightness in her eyes, one I’d seen too many times before. There was a story working on her, rewriting her heart’s desires to suit what it wanted her to be.

  Amity frowned. “But the chickens are my responsibility. I need to collect their eggs if we don’t want them to spoil in the nest.”

  “No,” said the woman. “Gabrielle will do it. You’ll come inside, out of the sun, and rest yourself. You mustn’t exert yourself if you’re to find a handsome husband.”

  The look Amity gave her mother was pure confusion, mixed with a thin thread of fear. “Gabrielle does for the pigs, and brings in the cattle. The chickens—”

  “Are her responsibility now. Come. Your sister is already inside.” Her mother turned and walked back into the house. After a moment’s confused staring, Amity followed.

  “It’s the start of her story,” I whispered. I took a step toward the farmhouse. This was a new Sloane, but she was hurting, and she was my friend; I wanted to help her.

  My foot rose in spring and came down in the fall, the world transforming around me to suit its change of season. The leaves on the trees exploded into reds and golds, and the chickens now scratched more sluggishly. There was an unfamiliar girl there, spreading corn on the ground while glancing anxiously back over her shoulder. Her hair was darker than Sloane’s, and the shape of her face was different enough that I identified her as this story’s Cinderella without a second thought. She was the stepsister, if you were standing in Sloane’s position, and the heroine, if you were standing where the narrative wanted the story to be.

  Amity stepped out of the farmhouse. She was thinner than she’d been the last time I’d seen her, and the light in her eyes was dim, almost extinguished. I could see Sloane in the bones of this girl, who had been so innocent only a few months before. The girl—Gabrielle, it must have been—flinched and shied away.

  “I’m sorry, Amity, I meant to come in and see to your hair, I truly did, but the bread refused to rise, and I—”

  “Hush, Gabby, hush.” It was Amity’s turn to glance anxiously back at the house, before returning her attention to her trembling stepsister. “I’m not here to yell at you. I fixed my hair myself, same as I’ve done every morning since I was nine years of age. I’m not some fine lady, to need a maid to do for me.”

  “That’s not what Mother says,” said Gabrielle. Her voice shook. I wondered how long it had been since she’d slept, or been allowed to eat a full meal. “That’s not what you said either, last night.”

  “I wasn’t myself last night.” Amity’s voice shook too, but hers was weak with uncertainty and confusion rather than hunger. I wondered what it felt like to have a story undermining everything she’d ever known herself to be. My story had been with me from the beginning; I was born with skin as white as snow and hair as black as coal. For Sloane . . . if she had had any natural connection to the narrative, it had been subverted when her mother took a new husband and brought a potential Cinderella into the house.

  How the forces that control our lives love their princess stories! I’ve never understood why. They don’t do the most damage, or have the highest body counts, but the narrative will almost always abandon its original intent to go after a princess. To be born a Cinderella is to have a target painted on your forehead in colors only the story can see.

  Gabrielle looked at her stepsister with wariness and hope painted in equal parts across her face. “Mother says if I finish all my chores on time tomorrow, I might be able to go with you to the ball at the Mayor’s house this weekend. She says I could wear one of my mother’s gowns, and not be so dreadfully out of style as to embarrass you.”

  Amity’s jaw tightened, not with anger, but with regret. I’d seen that look on Sloane’s face a hundred times, usually when she thought no one was looking. “I left some rolls and cheese for you in the barn, behind the hay. If you eat quickly, she’ll never know you’ve had it.”

  “You’re a good sister, Amity. I only wish I deserved you.” The raw longing in Gabrielle’s voice made me close my eyes for a moment. It hurt to hear.

  When I opened them again, the world had changed. I was standing in a church, rough hewn and lightly ornamented, but no less holy for all of that. Amity knelt alone in one of the pews, her clasped hands pressed against her forehead.

  “I have these thoughts, I can’t stop them, and I am truly afraid, Father, I am terrified of what I might do. Is it the Devil? I hear stories from travelers who have seen Salem, and they tell me the Devil gets into young women, twists them against their families. I’ve not signed his book, nor have I seen him waiting in the woods, but there must be some explanation for the malaise infecting my family. Mother has taken leave of her senses. She never scolds me anymore, even when I do wrong. She orders me and Isabelle to be idle, to sit upon our hands and stay in shadowed rooms for the sake of our complexions, while she heaps all manner of abuse upon poor Gabrielle. And I . . . I . . .” Amity stopped, seeming to choke on her own words before she continued, “I have started to do the same. I don’t mean to! If I allow my guard to drop, even the slightest bit, it begins, and Gabby endures it, like she has somehow earned it. Belle abuses her without cease. My youngest sister laughs while she causes our sister in all but blood the greatest of pain.”

  Amity took a shaky breath. Finally, she whispered, “I fear for the souls of my family if this does not stop. I fear for Gabrielle’s life. I do not know what to do.”

  She stood, crossing herself, and turned to walk toward the church door. I watched her go, eyes wide and heart aching. I’d never seen Sloane like this: Young, vulnerable, and worst of all, brittle. This girl was on the verge of breaking. Maybe that was what had to happen to her. Maybe that was how you took Amity and turned her into Sloane. But that didn’t mean I wanted to watch it.

  Amity opened the church door. The sunlight flooded in, making me squint, and when the brightness faded, the scene had changed again. I was standing in a small, wooden-walled room, with a threadbare carpet on the floor. Some efforts had been made, probably recently, to gussy up the handmade furniture: there were more pillows than were strictly necessary, and a jumble of decorative knick-knacks had been piled on every available surface. There were a few books—the family Bible, a Farmer’s Almanac, and a battered red volume of fairy tales.

  My heart sank. This was when it happened, then; this was when she understood.

  Amity slipped into the room, shoulders slumped. From behind her, her mother called, “See to it that you sit still! Sitting develops grace!”

  “Yes, Mother,” said Amity. Her heart wasn’t in it; I could tell that much. Sadly, there seemed to be no fight left in her.

  She paced back and forth like a captive animal, her hands twisting her skirts into knots around them. Finally, she grabbed the first book off the mantle and collapsed into the nearest chair. She glared at the cover for a moment. Then she opened it.

  I didn’t know enough about the time period to know how common it was for a woman to be able to read, but it was obvious that Amity could. The color drained from her face as her eyes grew wider and wider. She raised a hand to cover her mouth. That didn’t stop me from seeing the slow tears that filled her eyes before running, unchecked, down her cheeks. Finally, she threw the book at the wall. It hit with a thump.

  By the time it fell to the floor, Amity had already run out of the room.

  “We shouldn’t be watching this,” I said.

  “You promised,” said the mirror’s voice. “Now go after her.”

  There was too much at stake to give up now. Sloane, forgive me, I though
t, and followed her through the doorway—

  —into the farmyard, which had, through the strange logic of this trawl through her origins, replaced the hallway. Night had fallen. Amity stepped out the front door, easing it closed behind her, before turning to look back at her home. There were tears running down her cheeks.

  “Forgive me,” she whispered. “Forgive me and pray that I am right, for if I am, breaking this cycle before the dance begins will save you all.” She kissed her fingers and pressed them against the wood before she turned and walked across the yard and into the waiting woods beyond. I followed. I had faith that whatever force was motivating my journey would keep me from losing track of her, even if I stayed exactly where I was, but I didn’t want her walking into those woods alone. It was silly. This had all happened centuries ago, if the clothing and accents were anything to go by. And I didn’t care. She was my friend, or she would eventually become my friend, and she deserved better than to walk into a forest alone at night while a fairy tale was trying to dig its thorns into her.

  She walked for a long time. It was impossible to tell how long; I had the distinct feeling that I was skipping hours, if not entire days. She stopped a few times, to remove the bundle from her back and eat a bit of meat or cheese. Then she would resume, moving doggedly onward as she sought some undetermined goal.

  It was dawn on the third day when the riders appeared. Three of them on horseback: one white horse, one black horse, and one brown horse. It would have been impossible to ignore the fairy-tale symbolism even if the sole female rider hadn’t been pale as cream, with hair the color of arterial spray. Rose Reds might not be as easy to spot in a crowd as Snow Whites, but they had their distinguishing characteristics, and my own brother had been one. I knew her, even though we’d never met, and never would in the real world.

  Her companions were men, one with golden hair, the other with a nasty-looking scar cutting down the side of his face. All three pulled their horses to a stop when they saw Amity. They exchanged a glance amongst themselves. Then their Rose Red leaned forward on her horse and called, “Excuse me, girl? Are we near your village?”